Netflix Opts Out of Filming in North Carolina Over Anti-LGTBQ Law

TV Guide

Thursday

Jan 10, 2019 at 6:42 PM

If you want to hit someone where it hurts, go for the wallet -- and Netflix has a lot of money to make people feel the pain. Today, North Carolina is feeling the hurt because Netflix decided not to film their upcoming TV show OBX in the southern state.

Netflix is moving filming to South Carolina in protest of North Carolina's House Bill 2, better known as the bathroom bill, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The bill states that transgender people have to use the bathroom corresponding to the gender written on their birth certificate. The transphobic nature of the bill drew a lot of ire in 2016 with several other studios pulling production out of the state.

Several parts of the bill were thrown out in 2017, but it was not completely overturned, prompting Netflix to take its lucrative filming business down to the other Carolina. The remaining clause says that municipalities cannot create any anti-discrimination ordinances for parties not included in the bill -- i.e. the LGBTQ community -- until 2020.

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Netflix apparently has other reasons for not wanting to film in the state that were not disclosed, but THR's sources say the bill was a key factor in the decision.

OBX is about four teenage boys trying to survive after a hurricane cuts all power and communication to a fictional town on North Carolina's outer banks -- a group of barrier islands that form the state's eastern most border. Netflix is expected to be spending $60 million on the ten-episode series which is set to start production this spring.